Herman Koch - Dear Mr. M

My wife. Ana. Ana is still inside.

I assured you that there were only the two of us. That your wife had stayed at home, with your sick daughter. You stopped for a moment and said you felt nauseous. By that time your left eye was swollen shut. We had washed away the blood as best we could in the men’s room, but there were still spatters on your white shirt, just below the bow tie.

People — colleagues, publishers, others who had been invited to the party or not invited at all — looked at us as we made our way to the exit, once, then a second time, yes, that’s M, it’s really him, what could have happened to him, do you think he fell down the stairs?

That was when you started talking about flashes of light. A storm. There’s a thunderstorm coming up . I already suspected that you had a concussion, and tried again to get you to go to the emergency room. I said we could take a cab, that it would be better if someone looked at it — but you didn’t want to hear.

I got in a few good licks, didn’t I? You saw it. I wasn’t finished with him yet. I should have finished it a long time ago.

You grinned and slammed your right fist against the palm of your left hand. I had to promise not to start whining about the emergency room again. You wanted to walk home, but after only a few steps you stopped again.

What’s that noise?

You tilted your head to one side and pressed two fingers against your right ear, as though it was blocked — as though there was water in it. I said nothing, only looked at you.

For a moment there I thought I heard a plane, but now it’s gone .

At the taxi stand I held open the back door of the cab for you to climb in. By then you had forgotten that you were planning to walk home, and you climbed in without protest.

You had, I said, indeed got in a few good licks. I thought the message was clear enough, but you acted as though you had no idea what I was talking about.

Yeah, yeah. We’re going home.

I meant to ask you about the reason for the fight, but it wasn’t the right moment for that. Home first. Your wife would be shocked by the sight of your battered face and bloodied shirt, but maybe she was the one who could convince you to at least see a doctor.

You were slouching down in the seat, your head against the window. I thought you had fallen asleep, but it was something else, your body rocked apathetically to the taxi’s movements, when we went through a curve the back of your head floated free of the door and then bonked against it, without waking you.

I grabbed your arm, I had to shake you hard a few times before you opened your eyes.

Ana! Where are we? We have to go back! Ana’s still in there!

Once I had reassured you, you started in again about the thunderstorm and the flashes of light. I was just about to lean up to the driver to say that he should take us to the emergency room anyway, when I saw that the taxi was already turning into our street.

This is it, I said, here, here it is, third doorway on the right.

You tried to ring the bell, but I stopped you just in time. It’s late, I said, we don’t want to wake anyone and startle them —I took the key out of my pocket and opened the front door.

In the elevator you leaned back against the panel with buttons and shut your eyes. Your left eye was, as noted, already swollen shut, so in fact you closed only your right eye. I had to get you to move aside a little so I could hit the button for the fourth floor.

I think I have to throw up.

Less than a second passed between this announcement and the actual vomiting. I tried to sidestep it, but there wasn’t much room in the elevator. I didn’t dare to look down, I suspected that it had spattered up against my shoes and trouser leg too, and I tried as best I could to breathe only through my mouth.

One thing I always wondered was how that teacher, that Landzaat, how he found out that you two were spending Christmas vacation at that cottage.

You wiped your lips with the back of your hand and looked at me with one bloodshot, watery eye.

I just kept breathing. Keep breathing calmly, I told myself. Meanwhile I looked into that bloodshot eye.

You had said “you” almost in passing. As passingly as you had spoken earlier of the thunderstorm. Of your wife, who you said had remained behind at the party.

I wondered, in short, which part of your brain had addressed me at that moment. The part that no longer knew exactly where you were and with whom, or another part, the one you sometimes hear about with older people: they no longer know where they put their reading glasses a minute before, but the way their mother kissed them good night seventy years earlier is still etched in their memory.

I in turn could have asked you all kinds of things then, but I was afraid that if I did, that part of your brain now meandering through the distant past would shut down on me — and never open again.

That’s why I said, without looking away from your one good eye, that I had sometimes wondered about that too. I said it without looking away from your eye. I said I’d always meant to ask Laura about that, but that I kept forgetting to.

The elevator came to a stop at the fourth floor. I pushed the door open as quickly as I could.

Is it possible? I asked myself that at times. Is it possible that Laura consciously lured that history teacher to the little house? For my book, for Payback , it wasn’t absolutely crucial. But afterward I thought about it a lot. What about you, Herman, what do you think?

You searched for something in your pants pockets, then breathed a deep sigh. This time I was too late. Before I could stop you, you had rung the bell beside the door.

In a moment your wife will open the door, I thought. This was probably my last chance.

I said that I had new material for you.

I know you do. From behind the door came the sound of approaching footsteps, then of a dead bolt being slid aside, a lock being turned . I have new material for you too, Herman. New material that I’m sure will interest you. It’s time to lay our cards on the table. It’s rather late now, but why don’t you come by tomorrow night. Sometime after dinner, for example. Would that suit?

—

I start with the movie of the flower stand. There is no sound, let alone music, only the projector’s rattle.

“That’s right across the street from here,” you say.

“Yes,” I say. “The flower stand used to be right over there, across the street. They only moved to our side of the street later on. And where the café is now there used to be a snack bar, you can’t see it very well in this shot, but it was there. A cornet of fries with mayonnaise cost twenty-five guilder cents, a slightly bigger one was thirty-five.”

I walk onscreen. A lanky boy, hair down to his shoulders, a T-shirt that’s too small for him, jeans, ankle-high (green, but the color you have to imagine for yourself) rubber boots with the tops folded down.

Christ, I was so skinny then! I think; I glance aside, at you and your wife. Your wife is on the couch, you have settled down comfortably in the chaise longue. Playing across your lips is something that can only be an amused smile.

“Watch this,” I say.

I/the lanky boy collapse in front of the flower stand, I use my boots for traction on the paving stones and spin around in a half circle, moving my left arm spastically the whole time. At first the florist and his two customers, a middle-aged woman and a girl, look on in bewilderment, but without intervening. Then the boy gets up, shakes the woman’s hand, and walks off camera, bottom left.