The Dinner by Herman Koch Page A

clear to us that this question was not to be posed, so we didn’t pose the other questions either. Did Beau still have parents of his own? Or was he an orphan? Parents who consented to their child going away, or an orphan alone in the world? I have to say that Babette was more fanatical about the adoption than Serge was; it was her ‘project’ from the start, something she planned to carry out successfully no matter what the cost. She did everything she could to give her adopted child just as much love as her own children.
    In the end, the word ‘adoption’ itself became taboo. ‘Beau is our son, that’s all,’ she said. ‘There is no difference.’
    At such moments, Serge would nod in agreement. ‘We love him just as much as we do Rick and Valerie,’ he said.
    There’s a possibility, of course, that he knew even then – I wouldn’t want to pass judgement or accuse him of having acted with forethought – but later on it worked to his advantage: that black child from Burkina Faso whom he loved as one of his own. It was a different sort of thing from his knowledge of wine, but it had the same effect. It gave him a face: Serge Lohman, the politician with the adopted African son.
    He began to pose more frequently for family photographs; it looked good, Serge and Babette on the couch with the three children at their feet. Beau Lohman became living proof that there was one politician who didn’t act purely out of self-interest; that he, at least at one point in his life, had not acted out of self-interest. His other two children, after all, had been conceived in standard fashion, so it hadn’t been an act of desperation, this adoption of a child from Burkina Faso. That was the message: on other issues as well, perhaps, Serge Lohman would not act purely out of self-interest.
    A waitress topped up Serge’s glass, then mine; Babette’s and Claire’s were still half full. The waitress was a pretty girl, as golden blonde as Scarlett Johansson. It took her a long time, filling the glasses; it was clear that she was fairly new at it and probably hadn’t been working here long. First she took the bottle from the cooler and dried it completely with the white napkin draped over the bottleneck and the edge of the bucket; the pouring itself didn’t go too smoothly either: she stood beside Serge’s chair at such an angle that she accidentally elbowed Claire in the head.
    ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, and blushed deeply. Of course Claire said right away that it was no problem, but the girl was now so flustered that she filled Serge’s glass all the way to the top. No problem there either – except for a wine connoisseur.
    ‘Hey, hey, hey,’ my brother said. ‘Are you trying to get me drunk or something?’ He slid his chair back a couple of feet, as though the girl hadn’t filled his glass too full but had actually spilled half the bottle over his pants. Now she blushed even more deeply, she blinked, and for a moment I thought she was going to burst into tears. Like the other girls in black pinafores, she had her hair tied up tightly in a regulation ponytail, but its golden blondeness made it look less severe than the others’.
    She had a sweet face. I couldn’t help myself, I thought about the moment when she would pull the elastic band from her ponytail and shake her hair loose, later tonight when her day at the restaurant was over – her terrible day, as she would tell a girlfriend (or maybe a boyfriend): ‘You know what happened to me today? So stupid, just like me! You know how I hate all that stiff etiquette stuff with the wine bottles? Well, tonight I completely lost it. That wouldn’t even be so bad, but you know who was at the table?’
    The girlfriend or boyfriend would look at the golden-blonde hair hanging loose and say: ‘No, tell me. Who was at the table?’
    For maximum effect, the girl would pause for a moment. ‘Serge Lohman!’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Serge Lohman! That cabinet minister! Or