The Monument

The conference room was too small for Egbert van Vliet.
Not in dimensions. In intention.

He took his seat at the head of the table as if he were not sitting down, but being placed there. Back straight. Chin slightly raised. Hands mirrored, fingertips just touching. He had practised that posture for years. His father had said authority did not live in words, but in silence. Egbert had learned what silence looked like.

He cleared his throat.

Not because his throat objected, but because a meeting needs a beginning. The administrative cough. He controlled it the way others controlled their signature.

“Let’s begin.”

His voice sounded lower than he really was. He had learned that in The Hague, from someone paid to make power credible. Don’t lift your voice. Let words fall. As if they must pass the chest before being allowed out. People listened better to voices that sounded as though they had nothing to win.

As folders were opened, Egbert thought of Augustus. Of Hadrian. Men who brought order after decay. Not by fighting chaos, but by replacing it. Roads. Buildings. Rituals.

He did not consider it megalomania. More a sense of duty.

His family knew decay. Landed gentry, once. Administrators. Judges. People who did not own the land, but administered it. Until inflation, reform, and time did their work. The estate vanished metre by metre. What remained was posture. And responsibility.

The party had changed, as everything changes. The Anti-Revolutionary Party became the CDA. Principles dissolved into governing coalitions. His father called it betrayal and voted anyway. What else were you to do?

Egbert had learned that order was not a given. Order had to be guarded. And if guarding was not enough, it had to be directed.

That led, months later, to a decision that seemed small.

A piece of public art.

Steel and concrete, abstract enough to mean anything. On the new square by the shopping centre. Expensive. Unique. A signature.

He did not know the artist, Lucas, from studios or committees. They had met in a place where names were rarely used and phones stayed off. Lucas knew things that could not become stories. Egbert knew that silence requires maintenance.

The artwork was not a favour. It was collateral.

The old square disappeared. The benches. The low wall where boys sat, leaned, waited. Did nothing. Egbert saw it as emptiness. Later he understood that emptiness could also have a function.

The youths moved on.

First to the supermarket. Then to the green by the war graves. Complaints followed. About noise. About litter. About lack of respect. Egbert responded as he always did: signs, rules, hours. Closure at ten. Extra supervision.

Order reasserts itself, he thought.

But order is not water. It does not flow away. It builds pressure.

The boys grew louder. Rougher voices, harder music. Not out of mischief, but out of not being seen. The artwork became a boundary. And therefore a target.

One night there was graffiti on the steel.

OUR PLACE.

Egbert felt an anger he did not recognise. Not administrative irritation, but something naked. As if someone had laid hands on him.

He went further than necessary.

Cameras. Fences. Security. Interviews about decline and loss of norms. About a small group holding the village hostage.

What he did not see was how he himself had drawn the field of play.

Then came the barn-party incident. It began as escape. Ended in panic. Too much police. Too much authority. A bottle. A misstep. An officer struck. Phones raised.

Later no one knew who had thrown the bottle. On the footage it looked as though he fell, not was hit. But footage always takes sides.

The media found their story. Expensive art. No place for youth. Heavy-handed response.

And someone started digging.

The council chamber was full. Youths at the back. Silent. No sniggering. No phones. That was new. Egbert spoke about proportionality. About investigation. About trust.

A projector screen was wheeled in.

At the back sat a boy with his hood up, hands in his pockets. He was not looking at the screen, but at Egbert. Not defiantly. More inquisitively, as if trying to understand how someone could speak so much without saying anything.

Then the lights went out.

An image appeared on the wall. Grainy pixels. A Number plate. A man he knew before he recognised him.

Himself.

The image lingered. Too long. Egbert felt his shirt stick to his back. Not from heat — the air conditioning was low — but from something he could not suppress. He noticed he was holding his breath and forced himself to exhale slowly, as he had been taught.

No one spoke. No murmuring. No outrage. Only silence. Not the silence he knew. This one was empty.

Outside, the artwork acquired a name. Someone had hung a cardboard sign on the steel.

THE MONUMENT.

His phone vibrated again as he stood by the window.

Not a journalist. Not a councillor.

An adviser.

The conference room where they met later that evening was larger than necessary. Soft chairs. Water in glass carafes. A screen with scenarios already prepared.

The woman opposite him spoke as if reading out a procedure.

“This is not a moral issue,” she said. “It’s a narrative problem.”

She slid a folder across. His name on it. Thick letters.

“The image has to shift. From ‘favour-giving’ to ‘perception’. From ‘abuse’ to ‘privacy’. For now you do not respond substantively. Silence works in your favour.”

Egbert nodded.

“And Lucas?” he asked.

“Peripheral,” she said. “That will resolve itself.”

The process was funded by the municipality. That was standard. He was, after all, defending the office.

After her came the man. Fewer screens. More experience.

“No one wants escalation,” he said. “No one wants loss of face.”

He named posts as if listing alternative endings.

Water board. Advisory council. A position without a stage.

“A role elsewhere,” he said. “With dignity intact.”

Egbert looked at his hands. They no longer lay symmetrically.

No one had ever elected him. He realised that suddenly. He had appointed himself. Years ago. The formal appointment had only been confirmation.

Just as no one had asked for the artwork.

“And if I stay?” he asked.

The man said nothing. That was enough.

Outside, youths sat on the concrete around the artwork. Someone had written something under the cardboard, in marker. Not angry. Almost casual.

THE MONUMENT OF THE LIE.

Egbert remained by the window.

For the first time he thought something he could not order: that order is not always undone by chaos,
but by the question that is never asked..

by Johan Jongepier