Julia

by Otto de Kat, Ina Rilke

Genres: Historical Fiction; World War II; Literary Fiction; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

One summer's afternoon in 1981, a factory owner, Christiaan Dudok, is found dead in his study having taken his own life. He has left no suicide note, but on his desk is a newspaper from 2 April 1942, reporting on the bombing of the north German town of Lübeck. The list of the dead includes the highlighted name of Julia Bender. As a young man finishing his studies in Lübeck in 1938, Christiaan is irresistibly drawn to Julia, a courageous German who has emphatically rejected the Nazi regime. But that same year he is forced to leave both Germany and the woman he loves, even though he suspects that he is making the greatest mistake of his life .Julia is the story of a life lived wrongly, of a love so great that it endures for decades, and yet still fails. Fear of life and loss of courage, and terrifying inhuman fanaticism are the compelling themes explored in Otto de Kat's elegantly accomplished, elegiac novel.

Release date: October 27, 2011

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 122

Sample

SUNDAY WAS HIS DAY OFF, AS WAS MONDAY. ALTHOUGH FREE, he was always on call, so he avoided going to the house on those days. This particular Sunday afternoon he dropped by to take a look at the car; the engine had been stalling. Vague suspicion when he did not see Meneer Dudok in his usual place at his desk. Peaceful garden, terrace door half open, the boss’s reclining chair with a rumpled rug beside it. The lawn led down to a fen with water lilies. Dragonflies whirred above the surface. Nothing untoward, a hot Sunday in August, just the warning bell of a railway crossing and the slur of car tyres on the asphalt beyond.

He walked around De Venhorst, as the house was inevitably named after the fen, to the back, glancing up at the balcony in case Dudok was there, before going into the garage to check the old, dark-green Wolseley. He raised the bonnet without thinking, then hesitated. Something was not quite right, he could sense it. He had better go and tell Meneer Dudok he had arrived. Ignoring the terrace, he took his key and let himself in by the front door.

Not a sound. He listened out for the voice to boom from upstairs: “Van Dijk, is that you?” Nothing.

At first sight the kitchen looked the same as he had left it, everything tidied away, dishwasher empty and ajar. But a cupboard door was open. A saucepan on the hob, he noted, a couple of spoons on the draining-board. He knew Dudok seldom went into the kitchen: “Your department, Van Dijk.” The previous day he had left his boss’s lunch consisting of two cheese sandwiches under a glass cover on the dining-room table with a thermos of tea beside it.

“Meneer Dudok,” he called out warily.

“Meneer Dudok,” louder this time. He felt another twinge of misgiving, stronger than before. A threat he had felt for years, a niggling fear. Christaan Dudok, the gentleman who employed Van Dijk as driver, butler and general factotum, Christiaan Dudok, aged seventy-two, was not answering.

He found him upstairs in the study, a few paces from his desk. His hand across the threshold, the door half open. White and cold, in the middle of summer.

Van Dijk grunted. He felt for a pulse in the neck, then spotted a cereal bowl standing on the desk with a silver spoon beside it. A box of tablets, nondescript, unfamiliar label. Suicide for the posh. That’s what it was, no doubt about it: his Meneer Dudok had taken his own life. The evidence was all there. Oatmeal porridge. He had read somewhere that crushing the tablets into porridge made them easier to swallow. The immaculate dark suit from Spalton and Maas, lowest button of the waistcoat undone, fob watch in place – it was obvious at a glance that this was a man of standing, a man whom death had not taken unawares. The black, well-polished toecaps glinted in the shaft of sunlight slanting across his legs.

Van Dijk began to tremble, partly out of shock, but mainly out of indignation. There lay his boss, confound him, the fastidious, ever-reserved Meneer Dudok, sprawled in a pose that was positively inviting by his standards. The arms spread, one leg flexed beneath the other, the hands open, the head tilted sideways.

This was anything but his department.

He reached the telephone in three strides, dialled his boss’s doctor. He counted the times the phone rang as he cast his eye over the desk, which was not as orderly as usual. Dudok had been reading, looking things up, presumably. He spoke briefly to the doctor, who said he would come round at once. The books had been hurriedly laid on the table, some open at pages with notes scribbled in the margin. And an old, yellowed newspaper, too faint to read at first glance. That was where Dudok must have been sitting as he ate his porridge. Was there a farewell note? He hunted around, found nothing, and suddenly felt ashamed of his inquisitiveness. Had he got it all wrong? Could it not just have been heart failure? He crouched down beside Dudok, felt an urge to straighten the jacket and make perfect the tie, which was slightly askew. Wearing a tie on a hot summer’s day, how chic was that. Only once had he caught his boss wearing a shirt with short sleeves and no tie – that was as far as his casual mode had ever gone. But then the weather had been tropical – “uncivilized”, in Meneer Dudok’s parlance.

No, not the heart, this was deliberate. His health had been fine, well, except that he had gone off his head, obviously. Van Dijk tried not to give in to the anger rising in him, anger at his boss for leaving him in the lurch, not a word of warning, let alone of thanks. Dying like this, it wasn’t good form. Not what one would expect of a gentleman like Dudok, but what did he know, perhaps it was a very brave and dignified thing to do in his case. Van Dijk would not dream of doing it himself.

It seemed an eternity before the doctor arrived. Van Dijk felt uneasy being with Dudok, and began to wander around, in and out of the study, stepping over the one stretched leg each time. He even sat down for a moment at the desk, on the spindly chair with the fine cane-work back and slender armrests. It was a tight squeeze, a seat made for city folk with neither brawn nor paunch. Books as far as the eye could see in this room, piled up on side tables, lining the walls around the large window, crammed into an antique revolving bookcase in the corner, enough to drive anyone mad. A mass of grey, brown, burgundy, dark-green bindings, classical lettering on the spines. Ter Braak, he read slowly, Vestdijk, Du Perron, Nijhoff, Marsman – a whole graveyard of names he had never heard of. He lifted the yellowed newspaper, which was on the verge of falling apart. It was printed in an unfamiliar font. He made out the title with some difficulty: Lübecker Generalanzeiger, and the date: 2 April, 1942. A list of names on the front page had been ringed in ink.

Van Dijk heard the doctor coming up the stairs; apparently he had forgotten to shut the front door. He quickly put down the newspaper, coughed, and uttered a greeting.

“I spoke to him only last night, Doctor. At around midnight, when I dropped him off near the railway crossing down the road, and I found him here today at four. The clock in the hall downstairs was just striking, that’s how I know exactly what time it was.”

The doctor moved at a snail’s pace, the normal speed for this neck of the woods. And quite right too, thought Van Dijk, no point in rushing about in this heat. The verdict came as no surprise: death by his own hand.

“Painless.”

Still, there must have been a fair amount of pain before getting this far. His employer, with his half-melancholic, half-sarcastic gaze, was not a man of impulse. This must have taken some time in the planning.

“Look, Vesparax tablets. Saved them up over a couple of months at least, I would say. From Belgium, because they are illegal here. He must have known their strength, and how many to take. Professional job,” the doctor observed dryly.

Van Dijk was baffled. Why had Meneer Dudok never breathed a word during all those long car journeys to the factory and back? Thousands of kilometres of keeping mum, and all that misery immediately beneath the surface. Dudok, diagonally behind him on the back seat, forever with his newspaper, reading light on, cigarette at the ready. If you added it all up they had spent whole months on the road, day and night in their motorized den. But no talking, oh no, nothing personal ever, not the slightest hint of what must have been spinning round in his brain, constricting his windpipe, eating away at him.

“This will do, Van Dijk, you can drop me off here. I feel like walking the rest of the way.”

That was yesterday evening. He had been astonished, as his boss was never one to walk; in fact he insisted on being driven everywhere – right into his study, had that been possible. Walking was beneath him. The last stretch in the dark, the sandy path along the maize fields. Taking a sharp bend as he drove off, he had glimpsed Meneer Dudok standing with his head thrown back gazing at the sky, which was almost white with stars. He was barely distinguishable from the maize; there was not a breath of wind, nothing stirred.

He had parked the car in the garage and gone home. He had been told not to wait. When Meneer Dudok climbed out of the car he had patted him briefly on the shoulder – something he never did. He never touched anyone if he could avoid it.

“The weather is still very pleasant. Good night, Van Dijk.”

Just as he was shutting the car door he noticed the diary lying on the back seat.

“Your diary, sir.”

“That’s all right, I shan’t be needing it. Later will do.”

So the diary must still be in the car, he thought, and excused himself. In the garage he lowered the bonnet of the car and peered through the rear window. The diary was there. He slipped it into his pocket, meaning to look at it when the doctor was gone. This time he came into the house via the terrace. Sitting room, easy chairs, pictures, grand piano, lampshades: to him the whole place was already shrouded in dust covers, swaddled, unearthly quiet, frozen. Ready for sale and removal. He picked his way across, feeling ungainly among the assembled heirlooms. He could hear the doctor on the telephone upstairs. Calm voice, measured, as if he were listening even as he spoke. He made several calls in succession. Who was he was telephoning, and wasn’t it about time they notified the next of kin?

“The police will arrive shortly. Would you stay here? I have a house call to make.”

Of course he would stay. He asked if he should try to get in touch with Meneer Dudok’s brother and sister. Not just yet, wait until the police have been.

The doctor departed, wheels crunching over the gravel. Van Dijk watched the car go as he wandered over to the water’s edge. A narrow strip of grass bordered the small lake. Unsettled and disoriented, he sent some pebbles skimming across the surface, counting the times they bounced. On an impulse he took a handful of gravel and hurled it into the lake. Meneer Dudok had pulled a fast one, leaving him stuck with some other job to find. He had done everything for the old man, taken his clothes to the drycleaner’s, cooked for him, driven him all over the country, put up with his foibles and silences, helped him get over the death of his wife. How long was it since she had passed away? Seven years now, seven years of being his boss’s shadow, his stick to lean on, his pillar of support. Fetching medicines, chopping firewood, repairing everything under the sun. That it should come to this: a boss who crushed death pills into his porridge and then gobbled it up. Distasteful, selfish, pointless. Saving all that junk on the sly, knowing exactly how much he would need. His silhouette against the maize field. How odd it had seemed, Dudok wanting to be dropped off there. Now he could see why: his last stroll, his last starry sky, perhaps even a last attempt to breathe freely. A solitary figure staring into space, raising his eyes to the filaments of . . .