Dear Mr. M

  Ever since Herman had started going with Laura, he behaved differently in the classroom. He leaned far back in his chair with a pen between his lips, his long legs sticking out from under his desk. But even more than his shiftless posture, it was the look in his eye. I’m with her now, and you’re not, that look said. He should really say something about it, sprawling like that in a classroom wasn’t done, but he held himself in check. He knew the skinny boy’s reputation; he could imagine how he would react. Does it bother you? The bleeding had stopped faster than he’d expected, with great care he shaved around the thin red stripe on his cheek. The reason I sit like this is because what you say doesn’t interest me at all. He had to be careful not to cut himself again. Breathe calmly. What was it Herman had asked him last time? Something about Napoleon…no, now he knew: about Napoleon’s maîtresse. That high-handed tone! The insinuating look on his face as he pronounced the word “maîtresse.” He had tried to ignore the question, but wasn’t able. He had let himself go. And why should you suddenly be so interested in that? he’d asked—the whole class must have seen it, must have heard the tremor in his voice. And then he had looked at Laura, Laura who—ever since the fall vacation—had sat beside Herman at the back of the class. He had looked at her with a helpless gaze, in his mind he counted to ten, by five he was still no less afraid that he would burst into tears right there on the spot. First Laura had lowered her eyes, but when he reached seven she looked at him. For half a moment, eight…she had smiled at him, and then, nine…she shrugged. It was like a beam of sunlight at the close of a rainy day, the hope of a tiny bit of warmth that might dry your soaked clothes. With that smile and that shrug Laura had, if only for the space of a second and a half, distanced herself from her new boyfriend.

  After school he cornered her in the bike shed. “I have to talk to you!” he panted, and she glanced around a few times before answering him. “What about? We’ve said all we have to say.” At that moment, from the little tunnel linking the bike shed to the school basement, came the sound of laughter; a few senior boys were walking to their bikes, lighting their cigarettes and roll-ups as they went. “I saw you,” he said quickly. “This afternoon in class, I saw how you smiled at me and shrugged.” He paused for a moment and took a deep breath before asking the next question, the question that had kept him awake night after night, tossing and turning in his bed, for the last few weeks. “Are you happy with him, Laura? Are you really happy? That’s all I need to hear.”

  Laura raised the pedal on her bike with the tip of her right shoe—so she could hop on and ride off immediately, he realized. “I smiled at you and shrugged this afternoon because I felt sorry for you, Jan. I thought you were pitiful. I don’t want the whole class to see you like that, I can’t stand it. I mean, look at yourself, the way you look. How you…how you smell. You shouldn’t want to do that to yourself.”

  Then she took off on her bike. When she had to pass the smoking seniors, she hopped off, but she didn’t look back.

  It was Laura’s words that handed him the key to his current metamorphosis. He would no longer elicit her pity, he would look fresh and well rested, he wouldn’t smell anymore, at least not of alcohol and dried sweat. He was finished shaving, he sprinkled himself with aftershave, not only his cheeks, chin, and neck, but also his chest and belly, armpits and arms. Later on, at the house in Zeeland, when she opened the door for him, he would smell like a fresh start.

  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.