Dear Mr. M

by Herman Koch

  The woman, the girl, and the flower man looked like they were still in a quandary about what they’d just witnessed. The camera had now zoomed in further, you could clearly see the flower vendor’s shrug and his arms lifted in the universal gesture for Don’t ask me. “This is beautiful,” Herman said. “You toss a stone into a pond. All we’re seeing now are the ripples that the stone caused. In a full-length movie you would have to go on until the water was completely calm again. The woman buys her flowers and pays for them. She goes home with a question in her mind. She can’t stop thinking about it. But then I guess the roll was finished, right, David?”

  What came next were shaky, unfocused images, shot in an elevator from the looks of it, in which Herman and David shook their fists in close-up, then took turns giving the camera the finger and shouting. “What are you guys saying here?” Lodewijk wanted to know, but no one answered him. “Wait,” Herman said. “Watch this.” Now David appeared on the screen. He walked casually down the aisle in a classroom, until he got to the teacher’s desk. “Posthuma!” Michael said. “Oh, Christ!”

  “Wait,” Herman said. “Watch this.” David leaned down over Miss Posthuma’s desk, as though he was going to ask her something, then slid slowly to the floor. First the camera remained briefly on David, who was trying to simulate an epileptic fit by spastically moving his arms and legs, then it zoomed in on Miss Posthuma. “Watch this,” Herman said. “Watch, watch, watch…” By now Miss Posthuma’s face filled the entire screen, she was looking down at David, who was presumably still flopping around on the floor, but then suddenly she looked straight ahead—straight into the camera too. Initially it was hard to tell whether she saw the camera and Herman; she just stared into space a bit, almost in a kind of trance, her slightly watery eyes seemed to look right past the camera, but then her lips started moving, they formed words, a sentence. There was no sound, they couldn’t hear what the English teacher was saying, but there was no longer any doubt that she was speaking directly to the camera. To the cameraman. To Herman.

  “You never stopped filming!” Michael said, and there was both amazement and admiration in his voice. “What’s she saying here, Herman? What did she say to you?”

  “Wait!” Herman said. “I want you to look. At that face. Do you see it? Can you see it happening?”

  Miss Posthuma’s lips were no longer moving, the camera zoomed out very slowly. David, who had apparently stood up in the meantime, crossed the screen on his way back to his desk. Then the camera stopped moving, Herman didn’t zoom out any further. Miss Posthuma was still sitting motionless at her desk.

  “This is it,” Herman said. “This is the moment. A grown woman who has never experienced anything, suddenly experiences something. Only she doesn’t realize yet what it is.”

  “And didn’t she say anything else?” Ron asked. “I mean, you kept filming her the whole time. Didn’t she send you to Goudeket or something?”

  “That’s the whole trick,” Herman said. “Don’t stop too soon. If I had stopped filming after David got up again, it would have been nothing. We would have had nothing. Now we have the image of a woman in all her astonishment at life. Both her own life and the lives of others.”

  “How old are you two, anyway?” Miriam asked.

  “Do you remember that old game?” Herman said, as though Miriam hadn’t spoken. “Ringing doorbells, but then not running away? I did that with my friends when I was eight or nine. You ring somebody’s doorbell, and when they open it you say: ‘Oh, that was stupid of me! I forgot to run away.’ It’s sort of like that. The same astonishment. The same expressions. The only difference being that we didn’t have a camera back then. Afterward I realized that doing that was actually a pity, I mean with Posthuma. I bet her amazement at the mystery of life would have been much greater if we hadn’t filmed it. Now it’s sort of like a nature film. Animals drinking. A giraffe at the watering hole thinks it hears something, or sees something. That’s how Posthuma looks. As though she’s seen something moving in the water. But she doesn’t realize that it’s a crocodile floating there, she still thinks it’s a log.”

  “Did you really use to do that?” Michael laughed. “Ring doorbells and then just stand there?”

  “I bet you two think you’re really funny, don’t you?” Miriam said. “Tormenting the poor woman like that.”

  “You see it all the time,” Herman said. “The giraffe thinks it was mistaken and goes on drinking, and suddenly the crocodile spurts forward and drags it underwater. Sorry, Miriam, I wasn’t finished yet. Did you have a question? Was it for the director or for the actor?”

  The only thing projected on the sheet now was a bundle of white light, the reel spun wildly, the film came loose and began looping over the projector, then over the floor. Herman stopped the reel with his hand and turned off the projector.

  “No, I was only wondering what you two think you’re doing,” Miriam said. “If you want to act like idiots in front of a flower stand, okay. But Miss Posthuma, she’s an awfully easy victim, isn’t she?”

  David, who was sitting beside his girlfriend on the couch, laid his hand on her forearm, but she pushed it off right away. “Miriam…,” David said. “Miriam, maybe you shouldn’t take it so seriously.”

  “David, my dear, I don’t take you seriously at all,” Miriam said. “Don’t worry about that. But Miss Posthuma…The way she looked…so, so…helpless. I think that’s taking things too far, that’s all.”

  “But that’s precisely it,” Herman said. “Like you said: helpless. Those animals in the nature films are always helpless too. It’s not the strongest animal in the herd, but the young gazelle that is pulled underwater by the crocodile or mauled by the lion. So pitiful! But still, we keep watching.”

  “But it’s not a nature film, Herman!” Miriam said. “Miss Posthuma isn’t an animal. I think you talk about it too easily, like it’s suddenly not a person anymore but some animal in a nature film.”

  “We’re animals too, of course,” Ron said. “That’s what we are, whether we like it or not.”

  “Miriam,” David said. “It’s just a joke, don’t take it so personally.”

  “You can also look at it from a different perspective,” Herman said. “Why, in fact, is Miss Posthuma so helpless? She’s a teacher. Are all teachers helpless? Not if you ask me. What we’re seeing is someone who has lost their way, an old, weak creature that has wandered away from the herd. Like you said: an awfully easy target. Is that also what you say when you watch lions or crocodiles tearing apart that old buffalo? ‘Come on, guys, that’s a bit too easy, isn’t it?’ Things have to eat. It’s natural selection. Teachers aren’t helpless. It’s more like a herd, a herd consisting of individuals of an extremely mediocre species, true enough. A school of gray fish: as long as they stick together they’re better armed against attacks. Inside a school building they don’t have to worry much and can just go on talking through their hats with their boring stories, hour after hour, they don’t give a shit that everyone fell asleep a long time ago or has already died of boredom. Outside, in the wild, you can cut one off from the herd. Then, all of a sudden, their blathering doesn’t mean a thing. They’d probably shit their pants right away if you drove them into a corner. In real life, all that bullshit about physics equations won’t get you anywhere. And that lousy English Miss Posthuma tries to teach us is even worse. How do you do? My name is Hurman. Give me a break! What if you were attacked on the street in some slum in Chicago or Los Angeles. What do you say then, Miss Posthuma? How do you do? Or do you say something else? Something that fits the situation a little better? Shut the fuck up, you sick fuck! Go fuck yourself! Which syllable receives the main stress in the word ‘motherfucker’? Hello, Miss Posthuma? Hello? Shit, she fainted. Oh, no, she’s dead.”

  First David started laughing, then Michael did too. Lodewijk glanced at Laura and raised his eyebrows. “How are you doing otherwise, Herman?” he said.

  Then everyone had to laugh, Herm
an almost harder than the rest—everyone, that is, except for Miriam. It took something like thirty seconds before Laura saw it: Miriam was crying.

  “Miriam?” she asked. “Miriam, what’s wrong?”

  She was weeping almost soundlessly, only sniffing now and then and wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. “Don’t you hear it?” she said quietly. “Don’t you guys hear what he’s saying?”

  David put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her up against him. “Miriam…”

  “And you too!” she shouted, so loudly and so suddenly that it startled everyone else. “Shut your face with that ‘Miriam’ shit!” She pushed David’s arm off her shoulders and stood up—in two attempts, the first time she didn’t push hard enough and landed back on the couch. “Fuck! Cunt!” she screamed: two words Laura hadn’t expected to hear coming from this round, open face that wanted to kiss you on the cheeks all the time. “Go fuck yourselves, all of you!” She was already at the door, she yanked it open and slammed it so hard behind her that a candle fell from its candlestick on the mantel and landed on the floor; right after that came the sound of hiking boots pounding up the stairs to the attic, where another door slammed with a loud bang.

  Laura looked at David; like everyone else, probably, she expected him to get up and run up the stairs after his girlfriend. But David remained seated.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess that’s clear enough.”

  The one who did get up was Stella.

  “Where are you going?” Herman asked—his voice didn’t sound threatening, perhaps, but there was something about it that made Stella blink.

  “Just up to her,” she said. “I don’t…I don’t like this at all.”

  “Sit down,” Herman said.

  Stella’s jaw didn’t quite drop, Laura noticed, but almost. “What did you say?” she asked.

  “What I’m saying is that you should sit down for a bit before maybe going up to her. And in fact, I don’t think you should go up to her at all.”

  Laura glanced over at David, but he had his head down and was pretending to pluck at a piece of lint or something on the thigh of his jeans.

  “When someone’s hysterical, you have to let them calm down first,” Herman went on. “During the initial phase, you can’t get through to them.”

  No one said a word for quite a while after that. Laura caught herself staring at something on her lap too.

  “Well, shall I go then?” Lodewijk said. “Then it’s not so clearly a girl coming to comfort another girl.”

  They all had to laugh at that, a laugh that broke the tension and brought relief, and they looked at each other again; even Stella, who was still standing at the door, laughed a little.

  “I wish you all the success in the world, Lodewijk,” Herman said. “But I don’t give you much of a chance. No, really, I think it would be better if we waited a bit.”

  In the silence that followed, Laura pricked up her ears, but didn’t hear anything from the attic.

  “Maybe I overdid things a little,” Herman said. “I completely realize that not everyone thinks those films are funny, but you can talk about that without getting hysterical about it right away, can’t you? I mean, did we fight like this last summer? Or at school, the last few months? That’s what I’m trying to say. In fact, I don’t think we ever argued at all before that cow came along.”

  Laura glanced quickly at David again. David was no longer staring at real or imaginary bits of lint on his trousers, but at a spot somewhere on the floor; when Laura followed his gaze she saw, close to one of the table legs, the candle that had fallen from the mantelpiece.

  “Aw, well,” he said, “maybe we should just let her calm down a little.”

  Without meaning to, Laura looked over at Stella, her best friend, who was still standing with her hand on the doorknob—her former best friend, she corrected herself. After what happened during the summer vacation, the most you could say was that their friendship had normalized. Stella had stopped keeping Laura on the line with lengthy accounts of all-too-intimate details of her relationship with Herman, and Laura in turn had tried to do everything in her power to act normal. Laura hoped that one day they could be best friends again, maybe after Stella broke up with Herman, but deep in her heart she didn’t believe that anymore. It was like getting a spot on your dress, or on your favorite blouse; you pour salt on it right away, you wash the blouse at two hundred degrees and the spot is gone. But the colors have faded too—you hang it in the closet and never wear it again.

  Now, however, Laura and Stella looked at each other almost like they used to, and Stella rolled her eyes, breathed an inaudible sigh, and nodded toward David, who was still slouching on the couch. And Laura nodded back, to show that she agreed with her friend. What a wimp, not to stand up for his girlfriend. Cow or no cow, any kind of man would have gone after her right away.

  Lodewijk stood up. “Shall we do it then?” he said to Stella. “You can take care of the girl things and I’ll represent the ‘practical boys’ standpoint.”

  “Maybe someone should go who’s a bit more neutral,” Michael said. “Ron or me. Or Ron and me. I mean, you’re Herman’s girlfriend, Stella. And you, Lodewijk…yeah, how shall I put this…”

  “Yes?” Lodewijk said, grinning broadly. “Do tell. What was it you were going to say, Michael?”

  “I don’t have to explain that to you, do I?” said Michael, grinning back. “At least, I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain that to you.”

  “I’ll go with Stella,” Laura said. She got up. “Better that way. Just girls. Women…I almost said ‘woman to woman,’ but that reminds me too much of my mother.”

  “And then?” Herman said. “What are you two going to say?”

  “You don’t even want to know, sweetheart,” Stella said. “Just be glad you’re not there. Right, Laura?”

  —

  Miriam was sitting on the edge of the bed, her head in her hands, her suitcase open at her feet; there were clothes in it that looked as though they had been pitched in there in a hurry. Yes, Miriam was the only one of them who brought a suitcase; that too said something about who she was, Laura knew, even though she wouldn’t venture to say exactly what.

  Stella and Laura did the things one does in such cases. They sat down on the bed, on either side of Miriam. Stella put an arm around her. Laura said: “I think you shouldn’t take it so hard. It was nothing personal. Herman never means it personally. Right?”

  At that final Right? she leaned forward a little to look at Stella. But Stella had just put her head up against Miriam’s and didn’t look back.

  “I figured, I’m going home,” Miriam said through her hands, which were still in front of her face. “I wasn’t going to stay here another minute. But then I thought about how late it is. There’s probably no bus at this time of night, I figured.”

  “But that’s nonsense, isn’t it?” Stella said. “To go away because of something like that. It’s nothing personal, it never is with Herman.”

  It took a full second before Laura realized that Stella hadn’t even heard what she, Laura, had just said. Miriam was sitting up now, she’d taken her hands away from her face.

  “That’s me, Miss Practical,” Miriam said. “I want to go away, but the first thing I do is think about the bus schedules. That’s what makes me so different from you, that’s why you all think I’m a cow.”

  Laura knew that one of them—Stella or she—should now say something like Hey, where did you come up with that? We don’t think you’re a cow at all! But she knew how contrived it would sound, so she waited for Stella to say it.

  “You people don’t even see it,” Miriam said, before the silence became too painful. “I’m probably the only one who does. That’s why he hates me. And because of him, you all hate me too. No, no, you don’t have to say anything, don’t bother, I wouldn’t believe you if you did. Tomorrow I’ll be gone. Then you can all go back to your happy-go-lucky little lives without a practical cow
like me around to get in your way.”

  Miriam hadn’t bothered to wipe the tears off her face—maybe she had just forgotten, or maybe she simply didn’t care, Laura thought. The wet spots that gleamed under her eyes and on her cheeks did not make her round face any prettier, and that was putting it mildly. Laura was reminded of the little boy who lived upstairs in their building, she babysat for him sometimes to earn a little pocket money. He was about six, a spoiled little six-year-old boy who started crying whenever he didn’t get his way. Laura never let him have his way, at least not right away. She would watch him as he started to cry and stamp his feet, for as long as it took to make her wonder how anyone could love an ugly child like him. Only then did she give him the lollipop or the extra spoonful of sugar on his yogurt that he’d been whining for the whole time.

  “What makes us happy-go-lucky?” she asked. “And why shouldn’t you be that way too?”

  Now Miriam finally used the sleeve of her sweater to wipe her face; the wet spots became red smudges. “I don’t really know if you want to hear that,” she said. “And whether I feel like telling you about it. Besides, Stella’s with Herman. No, it’s not a good idea.”

  For the first time since they’d sat down here on the edge of the bed, Stella looked at Laura. “That doesn’t matter,” she said, rolling her eyes a bit. “Really, it doesn’t, Miriam. Even I don’t like everything about Herman. I think those films are funny, but I know exactly what you mean. That sometimes it seems like they don’t take it into account, David and Herman, how nasty the experience can be for someone else.”

  “Aw, David…,” Miriam said: it seemed like she was planning to say more, but she only wiped two fingertips across the spots under her eyes.

  “What?” Stella asked. “What were you going to say?”

  “I don’t know,” Miriam said. “I mean, I think David is really sweet, but when I’m here I also see how spineless he is. I don’t know if I really wanted to see that. Whether I can go on with him now that I’ve seen that side of him, I mean. And then I see him in that movie with Miss Posthuma and I think: That’s not the way you are, you only do that to act cool around…around…Oh, just listen to me! Who am I to say that’s not the way he is! I’ve only known him for about a week.”