The Dinner by Herman Koch

said. ‘Blacks who wore baseball caps and drove flashy cars: violent blacks from the worst neighbourhoods. But at least they were themselves. They were no longer some watered-down version of a white man.’
    At that point my brother coughed and cleared his throat. He sat up straight, then leaned over the table – as though he were searching for the microphone. That’s exactly what it looked like, I thought to myself; in all his movements he was suddenly the national politician again, the shoo-in to be our country’s next leader, and he was about to put in her place a woman in the audience in some provincial union hall.
    ‘And what’s so bad about adapted black people, Claire?’ he said. ‘I mean, to hear you tell it, you’d rather have them remain themselves, even if that means they go on killing each other in their ghettoes over a few grams of crack. With no prospect of improvement.’
    I looked at my wife. In my thoughts I egged her on, to deliver my brother the coup de grâce ; he had set it up and she could knock it in, as they say. It was just too ghastly, the way he tried to inject his own party platform into a normal discussion about people and the differences between them. Improvement … a word, nothing more: crap dished up for the constituency.
    ‘I’m not talking about improvement, Serge,’ Claire said. ‘I’m talking about the way we – Dutch people, white people, Europeans – look at other cultures. The things we’re afraid of. If a group of dark-skinned men was coming towards you down the sidewalk, wouldn’t you feel a stronger urge to cross the street if they were wearing baseball caps, rather than neat clothing? Like yours and mine? Or like diplomats? Or office clerks?’
    ‘I never cross the street. I believe we should approach everyone as equals. You mentioned the things we’re afraid of. I agree with you about that. If we would just stop being afraid, then we could go on to cultivate more understanding for each other.’
    ‘Serge, I’m not some debating partner you need to wow with hollow terms like improvement and understanding. I’m your sister-in-law, your brother’s wife. It’s just the four of us here now. As friends. As family.’
    ‘What it’s about is the right to be a prick,’ I said.
    A brief silence fell, the proverbial silence in which you could hear a pin drop, had that not been ruled out already by the noise of the busy restaurant. It would be going too far to claim that all heads turned in my direction, the way you read sometimes. But attention was being paid. Babette giggled. ‘Paul …!’ she said.
    ‘No, but I was suddenly reminded of a TV programme that was on years ago,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember the name of it any more.’
    I remembered very well, but had no desire to mention the name of the programme; that would only be a distraction. The name of the programme might prompt my brother to make some sarcastic comment, to try to take the edge off my real message before I even had a chance to deliver it. I didn’t know you watched things like that … That kind of comment.
    ‘It was about homos. They interviewed an older lady who lived downstairs from two homosexual men, two young men who lived together and took care of her cats sometimes. “Such sweet boys!” the lady said. What she really meant to say was that even though her two neighbours were homosexual, the way they took care of her cats when she was gone showed that they were still people like you and me. That lady sat there beaming smugly, because now everyone could see how tolerant she was. Her upstairs neighbours were sweet boys, even if they did do dirty things to each other. Objectionable things, actually, unhealthy and unnatural. Perversions, in other words, that were nonetheless mitigated by the boys’ selfless care for her cats.’
    I paused for a moment. Babette smiled. Serge had raised his eyebrows a couple of times. And Claire, my wife, looked amused – the look she gave me when