The Darkroom Of Damocles
(Willem Frederik Hermans)
De donkere kamer van Damokles (''The dark room of Damocles'') is the story of Henri Osewoudt. Osewoudt gets his chance to do his part when his alter ego comes into his shop with some films to develop: Dorbeck could pass for Osewoudt''s twin -- his better half, the man he could have been --, who managed to get into the military and is doing all he can to fight the Nazi occupiers. A shadowy figure who will slip into and out of Osewoudt''s life, he also enlists Osewoudt in the cause -- the resistance, it would appear. Osewoudt proves capable enough (put a gun in his hand and he can pull the trigger), but as Dorbeck''s tool isn''t really part of the resistance -- and in way over his head. The Germans use provocateurs to undermine and compromise the Dutch resistance, and it''s soon hard not to suspect that Osewoudt is one: wherever he went near-disaster followed for the resistance, and his kid-glove treatment at the hands of his Nazi-captors suggests only the one possible explanation.
Osewoudt is not even particularly incompetent -- a girl sent over from England shows how spectacularly wrong things can be done -- and he even makes some contributions (though, as murder, they''re of a decidedly ugly sort), but certainty and a type of competence, as manifested by Dorbeck, prove not to be much better.
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