The Dinner

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Authors: Herman Koch
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from seeing my brother and sister-in-law’s garden party as anything but an old, outdated TV commercial from twenty years ago or longer. As imitation cheese that had nothing whatsoever to do with French cheese, just like here, in the heart of the Dordogne, where everyone was only playing at being in France, while the French themselves were most conspicuous by their absence.
    Whenever I mentioned the anti-Dutch graffiti, they all shrugged it off. ‘Juvenile delinquents!’ was the verdict of the unemployed actress, while a copywriter who had sold his ad agency ‘lock, stock and barrel’ in order to settle in the Dordogne assured me that the slogans were mostly aimed at Dutch campers, who brought all their groceries from Holland in their trailers and didn’t spend a cent in the local shops.
    ‘We’re not like that,’ he said. ‘We eat in their restaurants, have a Pernod in their cafés and read their newspapers. Without people like Serge, and a lot of others, there would be plenty of masons and plumbers around here without work.’
    ‘And let’s not forget the local winemakers!’ said Serge, raising his glass. ‘Cheers!’
    Back in the shadows, in the darkest part of the garden beside the hedge, the skinny choreographer was making out with the younger member of the writer couple. I saw a hand slip inside a shirt and looked the other way.
    But what if the slogan-scrawlers didn’t stop at mere slogans? I asked myself. It probably wouldn’t take much to scare off this band of cowards. The Dutch had a tendency to shit in their pants at the mere threat of real violence. You could start off by throwing rocks through windows, and if that didn’t work you could burn down a couple of résidences secondaires . Not too many, because the real objective was to let those houses pass back into the hands of people who had first claim on them: the young French newly-weds who for years now had been forced by skyrocketing property prices to live with their parents. The Dutch had ruined the housing market for the local people; astronomical sums were being paid even for ruins. With the help of relatively inexpensive French masons, the ruin was then rebuilt, only to remain uninhabited for most of the year. When you looked at it that way, in a clear, cold light, it was a miracle that there had been so few real incidents, that the native population had been content merely to scrawl a little graffiti.
    I let my gaze travel over the lawn. Someone had put on a CD by Edith Piaf. Babette, who had chosen a flowing, translucent black dress for the party, was executing a few unsteady, tipsy dance steps to the tune of ‘Non, je ne regrette rien …’. If broken windows and arson didn’t do it, you could always take things up a notch, I thought to myself. You could lure one of these Dutch pussies away from his home under the pretence that you knew where there was another, even cheaper winemaker, then pound him to a pulp in some cornfield – not just slap him up against the side of the head, no; sterner stuff, baseball bats and flails.
    Or if you saw one out walking on his own, at a bend in the road, coming back from the supermarket with a carrier bag full of baguettes and red wine, you could let your car go into a little skid. Almost by accident. ‘He was suddenly right there, right in front of my bumper,’ you could say later – or you could say nothing at all, you could leave the Dutchman lying on the edge of the road like roadkill, and when you got home you could wash any telltale traces off the bumper and fender. All was fair, as long as the message got across: you people don’t belong here! Fuck off back to where you came from! Go home and play at being in France in your own country, with your baguettes and red wine, but not here, not where we come from!
    ‘Paul …! Paul …!’ From the middle of the lawn, with her flapping gown dangerously close to the flame of one of the braziers, Babette was holding out her arms to me.

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