Herman Koch - Dear Mr. M

And by the time your daughter turns eighteen and has to apply for an official document (a passport, a driver’s license), the person behind the counter will already be asking her to spell her surname. Perhaps she’ll still say: I’m the daughter of…

Who’s that?

Yes, that’s how it will end. You won’t live on in your work, but in the child you brought into the world in the nick of time — just like everyone else.

Maybe you’ve noticed that, so far, I have been extremely discreet in dealing with your daughter as a private individual. I have not, for example, made any attempt to describe her. In situations where she was physically present, I have left her out of my descriptions. In the tabloids, faces of the children of celebrities are sometimes rendered unrecognizable, in order to protect their privacy. Your daughter’s presence yesterday, for instance, when your wife left in the cab, is something I have not mentioned. I remember how she waved to you through the rear window of the taxi. From my balcony, I could see her little hand waving. I saw her face, too, but I won’t describe it.

And I’ve left her out of your shared dinners, because you yourself always do too. Your wife brings your daughter to bed before you start in. The silent dinner. You are, of course, completely within your rights to feed your daughter beforehand and then put her to bed. There are couples who think that in that way they can keep something alive, something of the old, romantic days when it was just the two of them. With no children. But how is that supposed to work when your daughter grows older? Will she put up with that silence the way her mother does? Or will she, like all children, fire off questions at you? Questions that can only help you out. That could make you a more rounded person — even now, even though she’s not quite four.

There are wars in which only military targets are fired upon, and there are wars in which everyone is a target. You, more than anyone, know exactly which war I’m referring to. You write about it. Too often, to my taste. Your new book, too, harks back once again to that war. As a matter of fact, the war is the only subject you have.

Which brings me straight to today’s sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: What does a war do to a person of mediocre intelligence? Or perhaps: What would that same mediocre intelligence have done without that war?

I could help you out with some new material. The women and children have meanwhile been herded to the air-raid shelters. Nothing prevents me now from handing you the new material on a silver platter. That in doing so I consider you a military target is something you should take as a compliment.

The material, by the way, is perhaps not entirely new. It might be better to speak of old material seen from a fresh perspective.

I am going home now.

The first thing I’ll do is read your book.

You’re up unusually early this morning. Especially for a Saturday. The clock beside my bed said nine when I heard you in the bathroom. Judging from the sound of it, you have a stainless steel shower stall and an adjustable showerhead — you have a predilection for the powerful jet, from the sound of it; the noise it makes when you open the tap is, in any event, like an April downpour pounding on an oil drum.

I close my eyes and see you holding out one careful hand to test the water. By then you have probably already undressed, a pair of striped pajamas hangs neatly over the back of a chair. Then you step into the shower. The thrumming of water on the steel floor becomes less loud. All I hear now is the normal splash of water on a naked human body.

Generally speaking, though, you’re more the kind for the tub. For endless soaking, I mean. With scents and bath oils, and afterward a lotion or a cream. Your wife who comes to bring you a glass of wine or port. Your wife who sits on the edge of the tub, lowers her hand into the water, and makes little waves with her fingers. You probably cover yourself with a thick layer of bubble bath — to keep her from thinking the wrong kind of thoughts. Thoughts about mortality, for instance. Or about copyrights passing automatically to the next of kin.

Do you own a toy boat? Or a duck? No, I don’t suppose so. You wouldn’t permit yourself such frivolity, even in the bath your mind keeps thinking about things that leave other people stumped. That’s too bad. A missed opportunity. With mountains of bubble bath and a boat you could reenact the sinking of the Titanic : on that fatal night, the captain turns a deaf ear to all warnings about icebergs and the ship disappears, its stern sticking up at an almost ninety-degree angle, into the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

What I do judge you capable of is farting. A loud fart, with a rush of bubbles that roils up like thunder to burst through an iceberg of bubble bath. But I doubt that makes you laugh. I see an earnest expression. The earnest expression of a writer who takes everything about himself seriously, including his farts.

In any case, this morning you opted for the shower, a rare exception. I’m sure you have your reasons. Perhaps you’re in a hurry, to be on time for an appointment. Maybe it has to do with your being home alone and unable to warn anyone should you become unwell. You wouldn’t be the first writer to be found dead in the tub.

I think about you as the water pours over your body. Not for very long; it’s not a particularly pretty thought. My impression is that older people tend to choose the shower in order not to have to look at their body. Please do correct me if I’m wrong. For you that’s not a problem, apparently. Apparently you can stand that, the sight of a body whose folds and crinkles seem above all to be a foreshadowing, indicators of a near future when that body will no longer be around.

As far as I can tell from here, your wife never takes a bath. Even though she’s the one who has nothing to be ashamed of. Before the mirror, under water, only half covered with a hastily wrapped towel, it doesn’t matter, she can take pleasure in who she is. But she never stays in the shower for more than a couple of minutes.

Personally, I regret that. I’m not made of stone. I am a man. During those two minutes I’ve often thought about her, just as I’m thinking about you now. Hanging over that chair at such moments is no pair of pajamas, but a white towel or bathrobe. She herself is in the shower by now. She closes her eyes and raises her face to feel the jets of water. She welcomes the touch of water on her eyelids like a sunrise, the start of a new day. She shakes her head, briefly but vigorously. Drops of water fly from her wet hair. Somewhere in a corner of the shower stall or close to the bathroom window you can see a little rainbow.

The water pours down her neck. Don’t worry, I won’t go into any greater detail about the thoughts that come next. I won’t defile her beauty; not out of respect for your feelings, but out of respect for her.

So the actual showering lasts barely two minutes. But after that she stays in the bathroom for a long time. To do things, I suspect. Sometimes I fantasize about just what those things might be. Sometimes I wonder whether you still fantasize about things like that on occasion, or whether they are just more annoying details to you.

—

This morning I’m having some doubts about that new material. The new material I could give you. Last night I read your book, hence the doubts. Yes, that’s right, I read Liberation Year in one sitting. I am purposely avoiding terms such as “in one fell swoop” or “at a single stroke”—I simply started around seven in the evening and by midnight I was finished. It wasn’t as though I couldn’t put your book down, or, even worse, that I needed to know how it ended. No, it was something else. That same thing you sometimes have in restaurants: you’ve ordered the wrong dish, but because you’re ashamed to leave too much behind on your plate, you go ahead and eat more than is good for you.