The Dinner by Herman Koch

with the beard had said. ‘We won’t bother you any more. You’re here in a private capacity.’
    The girl – Naomi – hadn’t spoken a word; she pushed her chair back and went to stand beside her father.
    But they still didn’t go away.
    ‘Does this happen often?’ the beard asked, leaning across a little so that his head was just over our table – he was also speaking more quietly, more confidentially. ‘That people just come up to you and ask to have their picture taken with you?’
    My brother stared at him, the wrinkle between his eyebrows was back. What more did they want from him? the wrinkle said. The beard and his daughter had had their jovial moment, now they should just fuck off.
    For once, I couldn’t blame him. I had seen it happen before, the way people hung around Serge Lohman too long. They couldn’t take their leave of him, they wanted the moment to last longer. Yes, they almost always wanted a little bit more; a photograph or an autograph wasn’t enough, they wanted something exclusive, an exclusive treatment: a distinction had to be made between them and all those others who came up and asked for a photo or an autograph. They were looking for a story. A story they could tell everyone the next day: you know who I met last night? Yeah, that’s the one. So nice, so normal. We thought that after the picture was taken he would want to be left alone. But he didn’t, not at all! He invited us to sit down at his table and insisted we have a drink with him. I don’t think everyone with a famous face would do that. But he did. And it was late by the time we left.
    Serge looked at the man with the beard; the wrinkle between his eyebrows had become more pronounced, but an outsider might have mistaken it for the frown of someone whose eyes were pained by looking into the light. He slid his knife across the tablecloth, away from his plate, then back again. I knew the dilemma he was struggling with, I had been there more often, more often than I liked: my brother wanted to be left alone, he had shown the sunniest side of his character, he had let the father immortalize him with his arm around the daughter’s shoulder, he was normal, he was human; anyone who voted for Serge Lohman was voting for a normal and human prime minister.
    But now, now that the beard just kept standing there, waiting for even more free chit-chat with which he could show off in front of his colleagues on Monday morning, Serge had to control himself. One cutting or even mildly sarcastic comment could ruin everything, and the entire charm offensive would have been pointless. On Monday the beard would tell his colleagues what an arrogant shit Serge Lohman had turned out to be, a man who put on airs. After all, the beard and his daughter hadn’t been bothering him; all they did was ask for a picture and then left him to his little private dinner party. Among those colleagues there would be two or three who wouldn’t vote for Serge Lohman after hearing that; in fact, it was quite possible that those two or three colleagues would pass along the story about the arrogant, unapproachable party leader; the so-called ‘snowball effect’. As with all slander, the story would take on increasingly grotesque form every time it was told; the highly reliable gossip would spread like wildfire, telling how Serge Lohman had treated someone with contempt, an ordinary father and his daughter who had asked politely to have their picture taken with him; in a later version, the candidate prime minister would have thrown the two out of the restaurant on their ears.
    Even though he had only himself to blame for this, at that moment I felt sorry for my brother. I had always sympathized with the movie stars and rock idols who went after the paparazzi lying in wait for them outside the club and broke their cameras. Had Serge decided to take a swing and smack the beard right in the face, wherever that might be hidden behind those despicably laughable or