Dear Mr. M (34 page)

A towel around his waist, he made coffee and fried three eggs with ham and melted cheese.
I mustn't ask that anymore,
he thought,
whether she's happy with him. I just have to be there
—he didn't know how to formulate it any more clearly than that, but somehow it covered the feel of what he wanted to make happen.
Be there.
A certain nonchalance. That's the feeling he would elicit: that he was cured of her. A healthy, clean-shaven, fresh-smelling man who was sufficient unto himself. A grown man. A man who was old enough and stood above it all. Whose knees didn't start knocking at the sight of a schoolgirl who had dumped him, traded him in for someone her own age. Only in that way could he be a viable alternative for her. The self-assured, grown man who came by only because it happened to be on his way, simply to deliver to her the message that he had moved on. That he wanted to tie up the loose ends, together with her. He wasn't going to call her anymore. He wasn't going to stand in front of her bike in the shed to keep her from getting past. He would not—and this was the episode of which he felt most ashamed, he stopped chewing on his omelet and began groaning at the recollection—follow her home and hang around under a streetlight until deep into the night. Yes, he would round it off, close the book, turn a new page and then he would drive on to see his friends in Paris.

Meanwhile, however, the seed of doubt would be sown. Laura would see them beside each other at the table. She would realize again why, not so long ago, she had been attracted to him. Beside the skinny boy he would come out looking good. Anyone would come out looking good next to Herman. How could it be? How could it be, for Christ's sake? He looked almost like a girl! Around one wrist Herman wore a knotted leather strip, around the other a thin, woven lanyard of beads. And then those rings on his fingers, the flaxen hair on his cheeks. And his teeth! His teeth were too weird to be true. To call them irregular would be putting it mildly. Those front teeth that curved inward and the open spaces between his canines and the molars behind made him look more like a mouse than anything else. A mouse that had been smacked in the teeth by a much bigger mouse. How could a girl be drawn to that? They were teeth that let the wind through, a girl's tongue would have a hard time not getting lost in there. Granted, when it came to seduction, his own teeth weren't exactly his ace in the hole. But he had practiced it in front of the mirror, how to smile without his lip pulling back to show his gums and expose the full length of his uppers. Whenever he couldn't help laughing, a reflex he'd developed made him hold his hand in front of his mouth. Don't forget to brush your teeth well, later on, he noted to himself. Nothing was as deadly as a chunk of bacon or white bread in the gap between teeth that were too long anyway.

He laid the plate with the knife and fork on it in the sink and turned on the cold water. The frying pan was still on the stove. He looked at his watch, he wanted to leave on time, he didn't want to run the risk of getting caught in the blizzard. On the other hand, it would be strange for someone who was going to Paris for a couple of days to leave dirty dishes lying around. He'd do them later on. Before he went out the door. First he had to brush his teeth.

He smiled at himself in the mirror above the sink. His hair was almost dry now, he pulled it back and looked. The bags under his eyes, that was a problem, they hadn't just gone away after one night of not drinking. He sprinkled a little aftershave on a cotton swab and pressed it against the grayish-blue hollows under his eyes. Then he opened the door to the balcony. Atop the railing was a thin layer of fresh snow that had fallen during the night. He swept it together with his fingertips and rubbed his face with it, his eyelids and the bags. As though I went for a long walk this morning, he told himself when he saw the result in the bathroom mirror. The bags were still heavy, but the contrast between them and the rest of his face was already less striking.

He sought out a pair of jeans, his favorite plaid lumberjack shirt and his ankle-high hiking boots. Holding a pair of thick woolen socks and the hiking boots, he went back into the living room and sat down on the edge of the sofa bed.

He thought about Laura, then he tried not to think about her. “I can't stay long,” he said out loud. “I need to be in Paris by dark.”

Suddenly he couldn't help thinking of his little daughters. About yesterday at the zoo. The chickens and the geese and the pig at the children's farm there, the parrots on their perches, the monkeys, the lions, and the crocodiles. All the way at the back of the zoo they had found the polar-bear habitat. Two polar bears were asleep amid the artificial rocks. Carrots and heads of lettuce floated in the water—it had snowed yesterday too, the pointed tips and ridges of the artificial rocks were covered in a thin layer of white. His first thought had been that the polar bears, in any case, would not suffer from the cold, that the difference in temperature must be less pronounced for them than for the monkeys, lions, and parrots. But they were a long way from home. And this habitat, with the dirty water in its cramped swimming hole, was above all claustrophobic. An exercise yard, no more than that. It reminded him of the room he had rented, and at the moment when those two images—his lonely room and the polar-bear habitat—were transposed, the self-pity came roaring up: like gall from a tainted meal it rose from his stomach, through his gullet to the back of his throat.

“What's wrong, Daddy?” his eldest daughter asked. She took his hand. His younger daughter tossed the bears the last slice of stale brown bread they'd brought with them, but it ended up in the water amid the lettuce and the carrots.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” he said.

He didn't dare to look at her, he didn't want to cry when his daughters were around. The hangover from the night before (six cans of beer, two-thirds of a bottle of whiskey), which had till then remained sleeping in its basket like a big hairy dog, now stretched itself slowly, walked up to him and licked his hand.

“You said, ‘What a shitty rotten mess!,' Daddy.”

“Did I say that?”

His daughter didn't respond.

“I feel sorry for the polar bears,” he said. “That they're so far from home. That they have so much room to move around at home, but here they have to live on a little rocky shelf.”

“Are we going home now, Daddy?” His younger daughter shook the last of the crumbs from the plastic sandwich bag into the polar-bear habitat.

“How about if we go and get french fries first?” he said.

In the cafeteria, where he ordered three portions of fries with mayonnaise, two colas and two bottles of Heineken, he felt how the cold had crept into his clothing. He stood up, took off his coat first and then his sweater. He had already finished the first bottle of beer. He tried to warm up by swinging his arms back and forth. Much too late, he noticed the worried looks on his daughters' faces, as though they no longer dared to look straight at him.

That evening his wife called.

“What did you do?” she said before he could speak.

“What?” He had just slid the turkey into the oven and was flipping through the TV guide in search of a suitable program to accompany his dinner.

“They're all upset. Because you…I hope it's not true, because they said you were
crying,
Jan! What were you thinking of, Jan?”

He couldn't remember doing that, but he had a suspicion that it was probably true.

“It was cold. I had tears in my eyes because of the cold, I told them that too.”

“Please, Jan! I only wish you had the guts to admit it. That you could be honest with me. But no, of course not,” she added after a brief silence.

“Okay, okay…I felt badly. The polar bears…you should have seen those polar bears. It just got to be too much for me.”

He heard his ex-wife sigh—and the next moment he felt surprise at how easily he had admitted that word into his thoughts: “ex-wife.” She wasn't his ex-wife, not yet, they were living apart for a while only after his ex-wife (wife!) had found an earring behind the toilet.
I have no idea,
he'd said.
Are you sure it's not one of yours?
He was no good with earrings; he wouldn't swear that he could recognize a pair of his own wife's earrings if he saw another woman wearing them on the street.

“Don't go thinking that I'll start feeling sorry for you when you act like this,” she said to him now on the phone. “Or that you'll get to see your daughters any more often. In fact, you'll achieve just the opposite.”

A gentle snow starts to fall as he lays his bag on the backseat. In plain sight. That way they can see with their own eyes that he won't be staying, that he's only making a brief layover on his way to Paris.

“Don't come on too strong,” he says out loud and starts the engine, which turns over only after a few tries. “You've just come by to say hello. You plant something, a little seed in her mind. Then you leave.”

He twists around in his seat and unzips the bag. The whiskey bottle is on top. He glances around furtively, but at this hour, on Boxing Day, the streets are empty. He unscrews the top and takes a big slug.

“You've got the drinking under control, so you can take a little now and then,” he says. “You won't show up drunk, but you will be loose and easy.”

After the second slug he feels the heat crawling beneath his clothes, he looks at his face in the rearview mirror; he's looking good, his cheeks are rosy, an open and warm look in his eyes. He screws the top back on the bottle, jams it down between the emergency brake and the seat, and drives slowly down the street and around the corner.

We're sitting in your living room: an Italian designer sofa, a glass coffee table, a chaise longue from the 1960s. Your little daughter is already in bed. Your wife has brought out beer, wine, and nuts.

After I first tried to install the projector on a stool balanced on a pile of books (photo books, art books, books of above-average girth and size), your wife came up with the idea of using the little stepladder. I went with her to get it, from a closet beside the front door, a cupboard containing the electricity and gas meters and a few shelves for cleaning products and other household items.

“Are you sure the timing is okay?” I asked without looking at her—by then I was halfway into the cupboard; I moved aside a vacuum cleaner, a bicycle pump, and a red bucket with a mop in it, so I could lift out the stepladder. “I mean, he doesn't seem completely himself at the moment.”

“He still complains about being nauseous and seeing flashes of light,” she replied. “And sometimes he goes completely under. It's not that he falls asleep. No: he goes under. I called the family doctor today and he says those are normal symptoms of a serious concussion. He should just take it easy for a week, the doctor said. And keep waking him up, in any case, when he goes under like that. No TV, no newspapers, no reading for a week.”

No eight-millimeter movies,
I almost said—but your wife said it for me.

“You're right, at first I didn't think it was such a good idea,” she said. “Maybe these aren't the ideal circumstances. Are there a lot of them?”

“Two or three. I can also come back some other time.”

But your wife shook her head.

“He's so excited,” she said. “There's no talking him out of it now.”

You didn't want to go to the emergency room. We picked up our coats from the checkroom, but it was only when we got outside, on the square in front of the theater, that I realized you were in much worse shape than I'd thought.

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.

I hear you laugh. I glance over again, but you don't look back at me, your gaze remains fixed on the wall, on the flickering image. By then David and I are in an elevator, this elevator, the elevator here in our building, making faces in close-up into the camera.

“Fantastic!” you say. “I knew this existed, but of course I've never actually seen it.”

Now Miss Posthuma, our English teacher, appears. She is sitting at her desk in front of the chalkboard as David walks toward her. She looks up at him, it looks like he's going to ask her something, but then he falls to the floor. David does more or less the same thing I did at the flower stand: spastic movements, fits, knocking his head repeatedly against the leg of the desk. Now we pan up slowly and see our teacher's face, dumb with amazement. Even more than with the florist and his two customers, there is total bafflement here. The camera zooms in, David is spinning on the floor in a much smaller space, barely eighteen inches from her feet under the desk.

“Watch,” I say.

The camera zooms in further on Miss Posthuma's face. Now she is no longer looking at David and his gyrations, but straight into the lens—at me.

She doesn't look angry, more like sad, her lips move.

“What is she saying here?” you ask. “Do you remember?”

“No,” I say. “Something like: What do I think I'm doing. What it is I think I'm up to. Something like that.”

I remember it all too well, it has always stuck with me, even long after my visit later that year to her deathly silent apartment out by the bridge, to run through my reading list with her—and long after her death too.

She said something about me, something about which I asked myself in stunned surprise, right there and then, whether it was true. Whether this seemingly sexless woman had perhaps seen something for which I had neither the proper distance nor degree of insight. Later, at her apartment, I wondered whether she would come back to that, it was probably the main reason why I had turned down her offer to drink “something besides tea” with her.

“This got you into a lot of trouble later, didn't it, Herman?” you ask.

“Yes,” I say.

“I remember,” you say. You pick up the glass of red wine from beside your chair and raise it to your lips—but don't sip at it yet. “They thought these films were pretty crazy. I mean: that flower stand and the things you two do in the elevator here. In hindsight. That's the crux of the matter. In hindsight, it takes on a different meaning. Especially this, with the teacher. No respect. That was the conclusion, wasn't it? Someone with no respect for a teacher won't find it very difficult to snuff another teacher. “