Intimacies

Adriaan is the main protagonist's love interest and is her strongest tie to her new life in The Hague. “Adriaan was the reason why I wanted to stay in The Hague, or at least one of the reasons, though I was embarrassed to admit this even to myself […]” (29). Yet, her relationship with Adriaan is the primary source of instability in her life because she is uncertain of the terms of their relationship. Adriaan is married and has an established family. Though the narrator regularly stays at his apartment, photos of his wife remain in the home, making the narrator feel as though she is intruding on their family. Despite the fact that Adriaan’s wife has left him and moved to Lisbon, Adriaan severs all communication with the narrator upon traveling to Lisbon under the pretense of asking Gaby for a divorce. Adriaan also invites the narrator to live in his apartment in his absence, further confusing the situation. In his absence, the empty apartment only makes the narrator feel less connected to him, and their relationship feels flimsy and tenuous. Moreover, she must come to terms with the reality of their lack of emotional intimacy when she realizes that Adriaan does not truly know her. However, it is unclear whether their disconnect is due to Adriaan’s complicated family situation or to the narrator’s own tendency to keep people at arm’s length.

Although Adriaan is absent for most of the narrative, he is present in the narrator’s thoughts as she fills the void of his silence with constant reassessments of the terms of their relationship and speculates on his activities in Lisbon. Unlike the other bold, egotistical men in the narrative, such as Kees, Anton, and the deposed president, Adriaan is portrayed as a genuine person who is trying his best to manage the complications in his life. When he returns and explains his emotional difficulties while in Lisbon, the narrator empathizes with him, and for the first time, the couple share a moment of true intimacy. Although the future of their relationship remains unclear, the narrator now considers that they might be able to move forward, and she optimistically states, “This time would remain a blind spot in the rearview mirror of our relationship, around which we would carefully maneuver until the act of that accommodation became second nature until we no longer even noticed it” (220-221). Adriaan’s invitation to walk with her in the dunes also represents a new beginning and mirrors the narrator’s hope that they can forge a deeper connection.

Jana is the narrator’s closest friend in The Hague. She is the Mauritshuis art museum curator and owns an apartment in a “gentrified” neighborhood. In many ways, Jana initiates situations that advance the action of the plot, and this role emphasizes the fact that the narrator is often too reticent to make things happen for herself. When Jana invites the narrator over for dinner, a man named Anton de Rijik is mugged and violently attacked outside her apartment later that night. The event brings the two friends closer as they become obsessed with the case details, and Jana makes several calculated moves to draw them closer to the victim and his family. Jana also serves as a foil to the narrator, and the narrator openly recognizes this dynamic, stating, “Her character was the opposite of mine; she was almost compulsively open whereas I had grown guarded in recent years” (2).

While the narrator remains a renter, Jana purchases her home and makes a claim to a portion of The Hague, decisively putting down roots in the area. By contrast, the narrator rents a bland, soulless apartment designed to house itinerant residents of the city. Jana also precipitates the narrator’s first meeting with Adriaan as they meet at one of the museum’s art openings. The narrator spends considerable time at the museum due to her connection to Jana, and the building becomes a place of comfort and enjoyment for her even as the rest of the city remains an unfamiliar enigma. Because Jana becomes obsessed with the mugging that occurs outside her apartment, the narrator also becomes uncomfortably entangled in Eline and Anton’s story thanks to Jana’s machinations. The precise depth of the friendship between Jana and the narrator is unclear, and like most of the narrator’s relationships, the ambiguous nature of Jana’s friendship represents the narrator’s difficulties in connecting with and trusting others.

Anton is the victim of a violent mugging outside Jana’s apartment on the same night that the narrator visits for dinner. Jana later learns that Anton owns a local bookshop and has endured a lengthy hospital stay after the attack. At first, Anton exists in the narrator’s mind as the helpless victim of an unexplainable crime. However, once she meets him and learns more about his life, she is far less sympathetic of Anton. When Anton’s sister, Eline, returns to the crime scene, she meets Jana, and the two forge a friendship. Meanwhile, the narrator visits Anton’s bookshop, curious to learn more about him. Later, Anton’s world and the narrator’s world collide directly when Jana invites Eline to the Slow Food art exhibit and introduces the two. Slowly, the narrator learns more about Eline as they forge a friendship. Anton’s attack also haunts the narrator and serves as one example of the undercurrent of violence and tension that permeates the novel.

The narrator finally meets Anton when Eline invites her over for dinner. However, the man who greets her at the door is far different than the victim she imagined, and the dinner is fraught with awkwardness as the narrator feels like an intruder into the close-knit relationship of the siblings. Moreover, Anton claims that he has amnesia from the accident, but from Eline’s prodding, the narrator can tell that he is hiding something. The narrator later regrets her intrusion into Anton’s family life when she spots him in a café with a woman who is not his wife. The puzzle pieces fall in place as she realizes the affair is the reason for Anton’s deception. Understanding Anton's lengths to keep his affair a secret and preserve his marriage brings the narrator to an epiphany about her relationship with Adriaan. As she muses, “[T]here was something sacrosanct in the idea of his marriage, some illusion he could not bear to break […] That was the power of a marriage, and in that moment I thought of myself, of Adriaan and Gaby” (197). By coming close to Eline and Anton, the narrator experiences the discomfort that intimacy can bring, especially when a person’s secrets are discovered. Her problematic relationship with Anton and his sister therefore reflects her own ongoing struggle with forming authentic relationships.