After our first outing, Narawanda was willing to accept me as a running companion. Like me, she seemed to be going through a fallow time at work and we took off together at 5:30 or 6:00 most evenings. After the third or fourth time, I managed to keep up with her, although with considerable strain. I urged her not to let me hold her back, and she denied I was, but I tended to doubt it. She was a beautiful runner, with the bird-boned physique of the best long-distance athletes and a perfect gait in which her arm motion and neck angle were exquisitely synced with her stride for maximum efficiency. I, by contrast, was laboring with each step, but I enjoyed the challenge and was pleased that the vulnerable parts of a middle-aged body, especially my knees and lower back, had no complaints, whatever screaming my muscles did when I rolled out the next morning.
It became our routine, when we were done, to stop for something to eat, since the runs inevitably left me famished. Nara was the type who discovered her appetite only when there was food in front of her, at which point she would often consume more than I did. Generally, we stopped at one of the little cafés near the house, where we could sit outside without offending anyone with sweat still rivering off of us. We usually had a beer each and a large bottle of water, most often at a place that quickly became my favorite, a Netherlandish oddity, a fast-food restaurant serving fresh fish. Behind the glass counters, the huge variety of European catch was a pastel display on ice—anchovies, smoked mackerel, shrimp, mussels, calamari, various fish fillets like dorado, skewers of raw fish, and many styles of herring. A sign outside boasting of NIEUWE HARING had first brought us through the door, since it was a local delicacy Nara insisted I try. The herring, boned and partially gutted, was served with chopped onion, then consumed without silverware, simply by grasping the tail. My father had been a huge fan of herring, although he had never explained it was a Dutch habit, but the taste now brought back my childhood, when the pungent flavors were a challenge. Now, I found I could put down four or five herring at a sitting.
As for my landlady, I enjoyed her company as I got to know her. Nara turned out to be one of those people who was quiet largely because she never had quite figured out the right thing to say. Her remarks were inevitably slightly odd, frequently far more candid than her timid nature would seem to allow.
Her parents were both Indonesian. Her father was an engineer who’d worked for Shell and had risen high enough in the company to get dispatched to the Netherlands, where Nara had been raised. She was an art student in the early stages of her education, but her mother’s side had been caught up in the Indonesian unrest of the mid-’60s, when more than half a million suspected communist sympathizers were murdered by Suharto and the military, with another million imprisoned, including all of her mother’s brothers. Her mother’s grieving accounts of that period had ultimately inspired Nara to switch her studies to law, and to do the master’s degree that led to her employment at the Yugoslav Tribunal. She admitted she’d had an ulterior motive, though, for her graduate studies at NYU.
“I stayed in school so my mother didn’t marry me off,” she said one evening when we were outside at a stainless steel table. Without her heavy black glasses, Nara had a lighter, prettier look. “She was willing to allow me to finish my studies, but I was so glad when I met Lewis, since Mum already had someone in Jakarta picked out for me.”
“And how did your parents react to Lew?”
“Oh, as you might expect in a traditional Javanese family. My mother wrung her hands and said this was what had come of trying to make her children safe by leaving Indonesia. And of course, she was right: I am much more attached to Amsterdam and The Hague than Jakarta, which is really just a place where my grandparents live—and where I would never feel right drinking a beer with dinner.” Nara reached for her glass with a sly ironic smile, lips sealed and cheeks round, that I was seeing more and more often.
On May 3, the Court received a formal response from NATO. They had asked the United States to provide most of the documents we had sought, and the Defense Department, citing the Service-Members’ Protection Act, had refused.
I met with Akemi and Badu several times to discuss our options.
Legally, the American response was unpersuasive. Generally, in conflict-of-laws situations, treaties trump statutes, meaning that the US’s obligations under the North Atlantic treaty were paramount to the Service-Members’ Act. But it wasn’t clear what kind of appetite the NATO leadership had for a confrontation with their American partners.
“Gowen has been talking about a compromise of some kind,” Badu told me, when I reported back after a couple days of legal research.
I wasn’t satisfied with that. Compromise meant that the Americans would turn over documents that weren’t damaging, and only enough of them to give Brussels a way to save face. The Court had no rights of its own within NATO, nor did the Bosnians, in whose name we were acting, because neither of us were NATO members. Our only way to litigate was to bring an action in the International Court of Justice, where countries sue each other, in behalf of the Bosnians. That was bound to take years, and the Americans could be expected to pressure BiH to back out.
After several discussions, the OTP leaders decided I should send a long letter to the NATO countries that were also members of the Court, explaining the fallacies of the American position and the importance of defending principles of international law. Badu agreed to present the document in person to each of those nations’ ambassadors to The Hague. The hope was to bring more diplomatic pressure on the US, although no one seemed especially optimistic that the American position would change.
The second weekend in May, while this was playing out, Nara went off to meet Lew in London, where he’d been dispatched by his NGO for a few days. I thought of traveling there with her, since Esma had hopes of finally returning from New York. She remained uncertain about her plans, then at about 8 p.m. on Friday, Esma called to say that she was on her way to JFK and would come straight to me on a flight that would get her into Schiphol at 6 a.m. Saturday. I promised to meet her.
Our hotel in Leiden proved to be fully booked, as were a couple others I tried. Since Esma would have to return to London late on Sunday, I decided we could risk a stay at my place, which I knew Esma would prefer. I was feeling no less uneasy about the proprieties, but after two weeks apart, I was not expecting to spend much time outside.
Esma, and a porter with a mountain of suitcases, burst through the doors of international arrivals not long after six. She approached me languorously and fell into my arms.
“I have missed you so,” she whispered.
The Dutch, who were either more secure or more fatalistic, still had luggage storage within Schiphol, and Esma was able to drop her bags there. She retained only a small piece of hand luggage.
“Thinking I won’t need much,” she said, with a completely wanton look. As always, I tried to assay my feelings about Esma, since the sight and scent and feel of her remained electrifying. Granted, she was eccentric. But there was still something special going on. Sex at its best is a team sport and Esma and I together were all-stars. Between us, there was a level of trust and engagement and union that exceeded easy understanding.
“What in the world is this litigation in New York?” I asked her when we were on the train to The Hague.
“It’s a divorce proceeding,” she said, “if you must know. The other side is absolutely bonkers. The husband is busily attempting to establish adultery and inhuman treatment rather than consent to a no-fault divorce. It’s a bitter, dreadful case.”
“And what about your client?”
“Very fond of her actually. Iranian family, exiled with the Shah. She married another Persian, thirty years her senior, but they have slowly driven each other quite mad. It’s like watching one of those nature shows on telly, with two animals whose fangs are in each other’s throats, neither willing to let go and be the first to die. I met her in London many years ago, and she insisted I become involved in the case. She will be awarded a huge sum eventually, everyone knows that, but her husband wants her to earn it with pain.”
When we reached the apartment, Esma went through the entire place, including Narawanda’s bedroom, despite my protests about the intrusion.
“Very little sign of her husband in there,” Esma said, descending the stairs. “Only photos of the happy couple are down here, more or less for show, I’d say.”