Herman Koch - Dear Mr. M

Laura was startled to hear her name, she didn’t dare to look at Herman, but then she did anyway. And Herman looked back. She counted to three, then lowered her eyes. Right away she felt the heat rising to her cheeks; she rubbed her fingers over them in the hope that no one else had seen. The way he had looked at her! She’d never been looked at that way by a boy. She was used to a whole spectrum of other looks: languorous looks, yearning looks, hopelessly infatuated looks — thwarted looks, above all, yes, if there was one thing that all those looks had in common it was the realization that permeated them: that they didn’t stand a chance. That she, Laura, was simply a bridge too far for most boys.

Herman’s look was different: as a matter of fact, he had never tossed her a losing glance, she realized now for the first time. Never once. From the moment he had spoken to her beside the ransacked table at David’s party ( So you’re Laura ) up to his declaration of love in the midst of silence, just a few hours ago on the beach.

If we were here alone now, he said during the whole three seconds in which he held her gaze, we’d know what to do. We’ve had to wait for months, Laura, we have a lot of catching up to do.

“Still, when I hear Life Before Death, I tend to think of something positive,” Miriam said. “Not that you’re already dead and just go on living, but that you get everything out of life before you die. You know what I mean?”

Herman looked at her, and this time his expression didn’t harden; an amused smile appeared on his face.

“See how easy that was?” he had said to Stella and Laura the night before, after he apologized to Miriam. They were standing at the foot of the attic stairs, Miriam had gone to the bathroom to wash away the worst traces of her crying jag. “She’s not very smart,” he said. “She’s just oversensitive, I think that’s sweet.”

Later that evening Miriam settled down on the couch with a book of crossword puzzles. Herman raised his eyebrows, then poked Michael and then Lodewijk and Ron too.

“What have we here, Miriam?” he’d asked, when he could apparently contain himself no longer.

Miriam was concentrating so closely on her crossword puzzle that she didn’t hear Herman the first time around.

Laura remembered the tense silence that had come over the group then, when Herman called out in a sarcastic tone: “A crossword puzzle!” And then again, but this time with a slightly different stress: “A cross word puzzle!”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Miriam had asked.

“Nothing,” Herman had answered. “Nothing at all. One has crossword puzzles, and that’s a fact we have to live with. As long as no one feels the need to solve them, there’s not much of a problem.”

“What kind of self-inflated bullshit is this, Herman? Is this off limits too? Like all the rest? TV, newspapers, the — what do you call it again? — ‘non-self-made music’? Are we only allowed to read really impressive books? Well, I don’t happen to like reading, and there’s no TV here. So maybe I can do something for myself, so that I don’t get bored? Or would I be better off sitting still and thinking deeply?”

Laura glanced at Herman, then at the others. David was busy again examining something on the thigh of his jeans, Ron and Michael were sitting on either side of Herman, their arms crossed; they were looking at her almost reprovingly, as though she had done something that really could not be tolerated around here. Lodewijk was in the easy chair by the fire, reading, or pretending to. Stella was at the table writing, a letter probably, every two days she wrote a long letter to her mother.

The way Herman looked at Miriam, though, was anything but a rebuke; he seemed, above all, amused.

“Miriam,” he said, “you shouldn’t take things so personally right away. Yet you brought it up yourself. Listen, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t have to do anything. But apparently, when you think you get bored. At least that’s what you said. Is that right? Do you feel bored when you think?”

Miriam let the book of puzzles fall to her lap, she took a deep breath and tapped her pen against her front teeth.

“What’s wrong with crossword puzzles, Herman? You still haven’t successfully explained that to me.”

“Nothing, in principle, but I said that already. I only wonder what goes on in the mind of someone who is searching for another word for ‘sailboat.’ With seven letters. I can’t help but think that it’s mostly a way to kill time. And time doesn’t need killing. Time is our friend. As long as we learn to experience it.”

At that point Miriam surprised Laura, and everyone else too probably, by bursting into laughter. “Oh, Herman,” she said. “How lovely! Are you going to give us yoga lessons? Or is it meditation? What exercises must we do precisely in order to experience time? Our friend time?”

Even more surprising perhaps was Herman’s reaction; he stared at Miriam, speechless, for half a second, then started laughing too. “Sorry,” he said laughing. “Yeah, now I hear myself too. I hear myself talking. I’m going to try it one more time, if you’ll permit me, Miriam. What goes on in your head while you’re solving a crossword puzzle?”

Once again, Laura thought she was the only one who had seen it, but this time she was less certain: the half second of total panic in Herman’s eyes when Miriam laughed at him. He had regained his footing with lightning speed though, it’s true, within that half second he had found the emergency exit.

“I think about things,” Miriam said. “Or maybe I’m fretting about something. Then I start on a crossword puzzle. Ten minutes later I’ve forgotten what I was thinking about, what I was worrying about. I’m busy solving something. Something outside myself. Something that has nothing to do with myself and my own, limited way of thinking. One hour later I’ve finished the whole puzzle. And I’ve totally forgotten what I was fretting about. I can recommend it to everyone.”

“Okay,” Herman said. “That’s clear enough. At least it’s clear enough to me. ” There was still a bit of doubt and hesitation in his voice, but his tone was no longer sarcastic — he smiled at Miriam. “I won’t keep you from it any longer.”

That had been last night. Laura remembered that she hadn’t liked it much, this sudden mutual respect between Herman and Miriam. Above all, things mustn’t get too cozy between those two. She wondered whether Miriam was really as stupid as Herman had thought — and whether he himself realized now that he had been mistaken.

All in all, Laura would rather have seen it end in a new clash and a crying jag, she’d even considered trying to steer it in that direction — but decided against it, it would have been too obvious.

Now she was glad she’d kept her mouth shut. Miriam had changed from the “dumbest” girl in the group to an ally within the space of a single evening. That could prove handy later on, when Herman told Stella how things stood. She didn’t have much to worry about as far as the others went, she figured. Michael and Ron always sought confirmation from Herman before doing or saying anything. David was still solidly Herman’s best friend, albeit a friend without a backbone. Lodewijk, in fact, was the only free agent in the group. Lodewijk always spoke his mind right away; there was no doubt about it, he had become stronger since his mother’s death.

Laura looked at Stella sitting beside Herman, her arm slung around his shoulders. Right after dinner Herman had announced that he was going to the garden to smoke a cigarette. Laura was just heading into the kitchen with a pile of dirty dishes, and as he passed he brushed her forearm gently.