Herman Koch - Dear Mr. M

“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, Herman 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…”