What do you do with the keys to a house that no longer exists? Ahmed still keeps his house key in his pocket, although his home is in ruins, as is his war-ravaged country. Once a violinist, now a refugee. After a terrible boat trip across the Mediterranean, via even more terrible refugee camps, he ends up in a Dutch allotment complex. The gardeners are not exactly thrilled about Ahmed’s arrival. Only Mari likes him to be there; she offers him a place at her home. Is Ahmed happy with that? Not really. He hates the role of polite beggar that he is forced to take. “A beggar cannot appear angry, not arrogant or aggressive, he must be as the world wants him to be.” When he can’t take it anymore, he reaches into his pocket and presses his fingers against the sharp part of his old house key.
It is details such as with that key that show how observant Wytske Versteeg (1983) is in her fifth novel The golden hour. Another one: every night after brushing his teeth, Ahmed puts his toothbrush back in his backpack. It can mean anything: does Ahmed try to take up as little space as possible, does he expect to have to flee at any moment or does he not want to give a permanent character to his stay with Mari?
Bruises and creeps
Versteeg could not have come up with such things without being close to her characters. In previous work she already showed herself to be a writer with a great empathy. She prefers to delve into those that no one else wants to delve into: the bruises and the creeps. A sickly girl and a monstrous uncle in her debut the blanks (2012). A disfigured, hateful surgeon and his pathetic wife in Quarantine (2015). A sad, recognition-hungry boy and a dark, faceless man in Grime (2017).
But no matter how strange or unpleasant her characters are, Versteeg always manages to bring them close to the reader through the right observations. She does that again The golden hour, in which she puts three ailing figures together: the lonely Mari takes in the cynical Ahmed, who has fled the regime for which Tarik – once a guard in a notorious torture camp – worked. Later Tarik becomes Mari’s guide. Perpetrator, victim and aid worker – a precarious love triangle that Versteeg portrays by alternately letting them speak. The big question: who really depends on who here? In other words, who has the power over whom? A question that Versteeg has already explored in previous novels. She always pits strong and weak characters against each other, often in a dark world full of grotesque elements. The golden hour, with descriptions of a country at war and an allotment complex in crisis, is her most realistic novel to date. Although you could also say that the world has become so bizarre that Versteeg no longer has to come up with anything.
The essence of the characters
What Mari, Ahmed and Tarik are doing (searching for cave paintings, waiting for a residence permit, torturing people) or where they are (in a garden, a bombed city or in the mountains) is not the most important in this novel. It’s about the character of the characters. Characters who are not all good or bad, or victim or perpetrator (but that is of course the case in any interesting novel). Mari’s altruism has everything to do with her loneliness. Tarik’s role as a guard has made him a prisoner of his memories of the camp. And Ahmed – the most pitiable of the trio – is the most unsympathetic. His total bitterness about his situation is unbearable. Boy, make the most of it, you keep thinking. Until you realize that’s exactly what all the well-meaning aid workers around Ahmed think too, and that’s exactly what makes him so furious. “Maybe I should be grateful to you,” Ahmed writes to Mari. “But gratitude doesn’t exist without hatred.”
It is a humiliating picture that Versteeg paints of assistance: anyone who receives assistance is humiliated a bit, anyone who provides assistance does it for himself. Really helping someone seems impossible, just as it seems impossible – at least in Versteeg’s work – to make real contact with another person. We get in our way too much. That sad image of humanity is in line with Versteeg’s writing style: a bit stiff – prose that doesn’t just reveal itself. You have to read carefully to see what Versteeg wants to show you; pay attention to those details. But anyone who takes the trouble can count on suddenly lyrical descriptions, full of warmth. The golden hour is that moment of the day when everything is bathed in the merciful light of the setting sun. That is exactly what Versteeg has to offer its characters and the reader. Yes, there is strife, loneliness and injustice, but every now and then there is a moment when everything is bathed in that soft, light glow and there is hope for everyone.
Wytske Versteeg: The golden hour. Querido; 332 pages; €22.99.
